


Wallowing

by bachelorgirl



Category: Dawson's Creek
Genre: M/M, final season, pre-finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-31
Updated: 2011-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-15 06:49:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/158159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bachelorgirl/pseuds/bachelorgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doug gets drunk and asks Jack out on a date. Because the first facilitates the second. With some help from Pacey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wallowing

"Open up, Birthday Boy." The sound of his brother knocking on his door was somehow managing to be even more annoying than it generally was. Which Doug would have previously thought was scientifically impossible.

Doug tried to get Pacey to leave, knowing that the effort was in vain, even as he was saying the words. "Go away."

Doug let his forehead fall onto the table at the sound of a key turning in the lock of his front door. "That is not the sound of you leaving."

"This is the sound of me using my key to your house. Which you gave me." Doug could hear the sound of Pacey wandering through his hallway - dragging his feet along the carpet, as usual - and jingling his keys and chuckling.

"I hate you." Maybe if he ignored him, Pacey would go away. It hadn't worked for the previous 23 and a half years of his brother's life, but there was a first time for everything.

"You love me. Because I tolerate your cat and get your mail when you go on vacation." Pacey was probably the smuggest person that Doug had ever met in his life. He radiated smugness. Other people, not related to Pacey, seemed to think it was charming. Those people were clearly insane.

Doug felt something heavy thump onto the table and felt his brother kick his ankle as he slid into the chair across from his.

"That's immaterial to this situation, Pacey. Right now? Hate." Doug tipped his face up and rested his chin on his crossed forearms and stared across the table. He tried to focus on his brother, but his vision was blurred by the two glasses of Malbec he'd had with dinner, the one and a half glasses of the hideously over-priced tequila he'd had since he got home, and Pacey's face was obscured by the half-empty bottle of the aforementioned tequila.

"Oh, dude. Seriously. You're brooding with the good stuff?" Pacey said as he turned the bottle to examine the label. "Don't you know you're supposed to save the good stuff for when you're sober? You get shitfaced with the stuff that you won't be able to remember tasted like propane the next morning."

Doug watched unblinkingly as Pacey screwed the lid back onto the tequila and pushed it, and Doug's half-full glass, out of the way.

"This," Pacey announced, seemingly making a large vinyl grocery bag appear out of nowhere and dropping it onto the table, "is how you brood." Doug could only stare as Pacey pulled 2 large bottles out of the bag and lined them up along the middle of the table. And then tipped the bag upside down and watched a couple of lemons and a bottle of Tabasco sauce come tumbling out.

"Prarie Fire? Or straight up?" Pacey asked, waving the tobasco sauce in his left hand and one of the lemons in his right.

"The bottle of tequila is wearing a hat. I don't think it's safe for anyone to drink that straight up." Warily, Doug eyed the bottle with the red plastic lid that was shaped like a sombrero.

"Oh, you'll be singing a different tune by the time we're halfway through this bottle, brother of mine, fear not." Pacey pushed his chair back from the table and wandered to the kitchen, where he came back with a small knife and two small glasses.

"So, happy birthday, dude!" Pacey announced as he settled himself across the table from Doug and poured tobasco into the bottom of each glass before filling them up with the cheap alcohol and sliding one of them over to Doug.

"What are you doing here, Pace?"

"We? We are wallowing. Power to the people." Pacey tipped his glass towards Doug.

"What?" Doug shook his head to try to clear it.

"Come on now. My offer for Miss Josephine Potter to come to your birthday dinner as my "date or non-date, feel free to label this event in any way you so choose" was staunchly rebuffed so she could attend the wedding of the sister of her quasi-famous author boyfriend. So I am wallowing in the vast ocean of unrequited love and I've come for company."

"And you couldn't wallow at your place? By yourself like a normal person? So as not to subject the rest of us normal people to the never-ending cliché that is your life? Especially those of us who are trying to celebrate our birthday?"

"Well," Pacey replied, holding the rim of his shot glass up to his lips, "I'm wallowing. You're wallowing, so it only makes sense that we should wallow together. Misery - which, by the way, is you and me, my friend - loves company."

"I'm not wallowing. Which means that you can go home." Doug pointed to the door, just in case Pacey had forgotten where it was in the last 5 minutes. "Now."

"What were you doing when I got here, then?" Pacey's shoe was tapping rhythmically against the tiled floor.

"Sitting at my kitchen table -"

"Alone," Pacey interrupted.

"Having a glass of tequila -"

"Having half a bottle of your prized tequila," Pacey interrupted again. "Alone."

"In the peace and quiet and -"

"In the dark. Alone." Pacey paused. "Which is pretty much the definition of wallowing. And, speaking of clichés, you seriously aren't trying to tell me that my life is a bigger cliché than your life."

"I most certainl--." Again, Doug found himself interrupted by his brother, this time by a wave of his hand.

"Okay. Here's the game. We'll take turns. For each cliché that we can come up with about each other's lives, we'll take a drink. Loser gets rewarded by hopefully consuming enough shitty tequila that they won't remember any of this in the morning."

"And the winner?"

"Bragging rights, dude."

"Oh, right. How could I miss that?" Doug found himself smiling in spite of himself. His brother's company was annoyingly becoming rapidly less annoying.

"Alright," Pacey said, a mock-serious expression on his face. "Round One. I'll even let you go first, birthday boy."

"How noble."

"Bring it on, old man." Pacey looked over at him, expectantly.

"You're wallowing because you've been in love with the girl next door since high school." Doug looked at Pacey and watched him down the shot without blinking an eye.

"You're obsessively neat." Doug had to drink. He wasn't sure exactly how that was a cliché, but it was true, and this game seemed to have very loose rules, at best and Doug was nothing if not a good sport.

"You're the clichéd troubled youngest child." Which was also true. Or, at least, it had been, once upon a time.

"You alphabetize your cd collection. That consists primarily of classical music and female pop divas." And, there it was. The gay card. _Fuck it,_ Doug thought, and tossed his head back and swallowed a mouthful of the horrible tequila with a grimace.

"You dated your best friend's first girlfriend. Three times." He could deliver a low blow, too. Though, he could probably have thought of a meaner turn of phrase, if he were someone else. Or mad at Pacey. Which he really wasn't. At least, not yet.

Pacey grinned as he drank to that. It wasn't like it wasn't true, either.

"You live alone. With a cat and so many houseplants that your kitchen is probably home to several undiscovered species of insects." Doug loved his bird of paradise plants. And, hey, it could be worse. He could have orchids. He drank willingly.

"You slept with your three times ex-girlfriend's college roommate." That was a mouthful, especially being less than completely sober. But, Pacey got it and punctuated Doug's sentence with a long, proud drink.

"You're the bow-legged sheriff of a small town. And you have the hat." Doug proudly drank. He'd worked hard for that hat, even if he was rarely inclined to wear it.

"You slept with your high-school English teacher." Doug cut a lemon into wedges, carefully, while Pacey drank. It was getting harder to think of things with each passing shot. Which, if he thought about it, was probably the point.

Doug had already raised his glass in preparation for taking his next shot before Pacey even began to speak. "You're sitting alone in your kitchen and wallowing on your birthday because you are totally and pathetically head-over-heels for one of your brother's best friends."

Doug nearly choked on his drink and he felt his eyes tearing up as some of the Tabasco-laced tequila shot out of his nose. "The hell?" he managed to choke out, between coughing fits.

"You heard me. Drink up, studmuffin. Don't even bother trying to deny it. Hey, he's totally legal so it's all kosher." Pacey nodded and poured Doug another drink, straight up, this time. Doug downed it gratefully to try and soothe the burning in the back of his throat and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand before reaching for a lemon wedge.

"Well he is, now. Anyway." Pacey was laughing. The fucker.

For the second time in as many minutes, Doug felt himself choking, this time, on a lemon wedge.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Doug stared at the empty glass that he was clutching in his hands.

"You drank. I think you do." Pacey had what was probably the world's most annoying shit-eating grin on his face.

"I think I'm done wallowing. I think it's time for me to go to bed." This was not the time, the place, or, really, the person for this discussion. This discussion was far better suited for some indeterminate time in the future, far away from here, and preferably with someone he didn't know and whom he would never see again. Or who was paid for their confidentiality.

"I think you're avoiding. Listen, man. How many times have you listened to me drunkenly and not-so-drunkenly wax poetic about the many wonderful qualities of Joey Potter for, what? Almost 10 years now? It's the least I can do to return the favour. But, if it will make you feel better, I can give you an encore and go first. We can be sequentially pathetic."

"No, that's quiet alright, Pacey. Really, there's nothing to say about anyone. You're totally off the mark."

"Oh," Pacey said, his voice dripping with insincere shock. "So, that *wasn't* you at dinner? It wasn't you who couldn't take your eyes off of Capeside High's new English teacher? The gay one who just moved back into town and came to your birthday dinner because he was invited by your younger brother. Because your younger brother was not, in fact, raised by blind Amish wolves under a rock and can see, plain as day, that you think he's just about the greatest thing since 1928 - which, incidentally, was when they invented sliced bread?"

Doug could feel his entire face and neck flushing suddenly and wished he could blame the alcohol. "Don't know what you're talking about."

Pacey chuckled. "Oh, come on. He's a grown up now, dude. You noticed. It's fine. Just like it was fine when you spent all night staring at him when I had his "I Can't Figure Out Why You Came Back But Welcome Back to Capeside Anyway" party at the Ice House last month. Where he gave you his phone number. I know I'm not gay, but I'm pretty sure that's part of the homosexual mating ritual, the same as it is for us heterosexual types."

"Don't call me dude. And he only gave me his number so that-"

Doug could hear Pacey's eye-roll without even looking up. "He gave you his number so that you would call him. If you ever manage to spelunk your way out of the closet. I swear to God I should have got you a damned compass for your birthday. He's a grown up guy with a grown up job and he's totally not even young enough to be scandalously too young for you anymore. Give it up and roll with it, Dougy."

"Pacey. I can't..." Doug cracked the seal on the bottle of cheap-ass Black Velvet that Pacey had brought over, poured some into the bottom of the glass and tossed it back, forcing himself not to wince at the burn.

"Bullshit, man. Bull. Shit. Alright, Dougy. I'm kinda more than a little drunk and you know that any advice I give out while drunk is usually better than the advice I give out when I'm sober and that this kind of advice is really a limited time offer, so you should take it while it's here and then we can never speak of our dating lives ever again. Scout's honour."

Pacey pushed himself away from the table and out of the chair. "You know this is pretty much the last time you and I are going to discuss our feelings for the next 4-6 years, so you'd better take advantage of my brief, yet spectacular, moment of insight and realize that no one, except you, seems to give a shit if you want to sleep with guys more than just out of passing curiosity."

Doug felt his brother ruffle his hand through his hair and he filled his glass and took another long drink of whiskey. He was probably maybe really going to regret mixing alcohol come morning. Right now, it sounded like the perfect solution to all of his problems.

"Call him, loser." Pacey's voice was fond. Before he left, Pacey pulled Doug's cell phone out of the bowl on the kitchen counter and put it next to Doug's half-full glass on the table before shuffling back down the hall and pulling the door closed behind him.

Which is how Doug found himself in a Mexican stand-off-slash-staring contest with the half-empty bottle of tequila and his cell phone half an hour into the start of his actual birthday. He's not sure who ultimately won the stand-off, but it probably wasn't himself, because there had to be an explanation as to why he found himself taking a deep breath and dialling Jack's number.

Smart people would put their money on the tequila, every time.

"Hello?" Jack's voice came through clearly through the phone after a ring and a half.

"Hey. How're you?" The tequila was probably also to blame for his monosyllabic vocabulary.

"I'm... good?"

"What're you up to?" Doug pushed a stray ice cube around the top of his table, making abstract designs with the water trail left behind.

"Having a beer, watching the Discovery Channel. How about you?"

"Having tequila. And whiskey. But, mostly tequila. I was wallowing, I think. Pacey said I was wallowing. He was the one who was wallowing. You know. About Joey. For a change. I don't think I was wallowing."

"Wallowing, huh?"

"And, now I'm spelunking." Doug drew an arrow in the puddle of water he'd created on his tabletop. He didn't need a compass. He had a very good sense of direction.

"Uh... huh. Right." Jack sounded dubious.

"I wanted to say thanks for the present. It's awesome."

Jack giggled. Honest-to-goodness giggled. "I didn't even think the word awesome was in your vocabulary. You haven't broken into it already, have you? I'm pretty sure that there are parts of the world where you can be shot for drinking an AOC Chambertin with tequila."

"No chance. There's no way I'm having that with anything other than a striploin with more marbling than my bathroom floor. And I might possibly need to be celebrating becoming president or something. Because that is a really good bottle of wine. Really, really good. Which you know. Since you bought it and everything." It was possibly the best birthday present he'd ever gotten. Definitely the best one he could remember at the moment.

"I am aware, yes." Jack sounded amused. Which probably meant that Doug was rambling. "Although it was actually supposed to be for drinking at some point, not just for decoration."

"You should come over. Then you could have some of the wine. Maybe not today though, since you're right and pretty much all I can taste right now is tequila. And I think it's late. But, some other time. Like next week or something. Before school starts. We could have a really good dinner and a really, really good bottle of wine. I could cook." Doug's tongue felt heavy in his mouth.

"Are you planning on becoming president by next week? Because I think the Capeside Sheriff's Department might want at least 2 weeks' notice so they can replace you."

"Okay, so maybe just a belated birthday dinner? Without half of Capeside along? I'd like that." Doug suddenly had a hazy vision of he and Jack and a bottle of wine and a couple of grilled steaks and all of a sudden he realized how much he would like that. "You know. If you wanted to come over. I could grill or something. Not tonight. Next week."

"Yeah. I'd like that. I already brought the wine, so maybe I could bring dessert."

"I like cheesecake." He'd had a really good cheesecake with dinner tonight and he could always go for more. Cheesecake goes with everything.

Jack laughed and the sound echoed happily in Doug's ears. "I've noticed. I'm pretty sure I could wrangle some up."

"Next Saturday?" Doug didn't know if he'd been planning to do anything that day, but he was now grilling steak and drinking wine and eating cheesecake.

"Yeah. If you're sure that you don't want to save the bottle of wine for when you actually run for president."

"There'll be more wine. I'm pretty sure they might even give you wine if you become president. If you're coming to dinner, we'll drink this bottle and find another one to save for that time."

"Alright, Doug. We'll celebrate your birthday with wine and meat and cheesecake and I'll just take advantage of your generosity and happily drink and eat my share."

"It a date." Doug felt himself nodding and heard his speech starting to slur a little bit, but he knew that there was a big, stupid grin on his face - in spite of the sensation of the room spinning just a little after his vigorous head-nodding.

"Definitely," Jack agreed. "It's a date. And, Doug?"

"Yeah?"

"You're starting to sound really drunk and really tired and I think you should probably pack it in for the night. Don't be calling anyone else after we hang up and promise that bottle of wine to anyone else. I'm going to hold you to our date. Deal?"

"I wouldn't worry about that. It's written in stone. Or, it will be. In the morning." No one else was getting their paws on the bottle of wine. Or his date.

"Yeah. I would wait until your fine motor skills are probably a little more reliable. I'd hate to have to re-schedule our date because you injure your grilling hand while trying to manoeuvre a pen in this state." Jack paused. "Have a good night, Doug."

"You too. and, thanks again. Thanks for coming tonight. I'm glad you were there."

"I'm glad I was there, too. 'Night Doug."

"'Night, Jack. I'll see you on Saturday."

Doug smiled as he ended the call and was happy that the room only spun around him a little bit as he pushed himself up and away from the table.

It was a short distance to his room and he really only took enough time to haphazardly remove his shirt before falling into bed.

It seemed like he had just closed his eyes when he awoke to the feeling of his cat leaping onto his chest and the buzzing of his doorbell. Ignoring the pounding in his head, he shuffled to the door and peeked through the peephole. On the other side of the door, all he could see was a bag with the Ice House logo on it. Which was more than enough of a reason for him to open his door on a normal day. And, not only did he have a hangover this morning, he also had 3 other people's hangovers as well. Something greasy and delicious sounded just like what he needed.

Doug pulled open the door and expected to see his brother and he felt his jaw literally drop when the person holding the Ice House bag was not his brother, but was Jack. Suddenly, fuzzy memories of a telephone call he'd made came rushing through his brain and he felt himself flush.

"I. Um. Last night. I." Doug shrugged. He didn't really know if he should be apologizing. But, he thought he probably should be. He just wasn't sure for what.

Jack smiled and held up the Walgreens bag that he had in his other hand and offered to Doug. "Bottle of water and some Ibuprofen."

Doug smiled as he took the bag and watched Jack put the other bag, full of food, onto the kitchen counter and start pulling plastic containers out and arranging them on the counter.

"I'm not going to hold you to your promise of the birthday wine, but, in case you still mean it this morning, I figured that bottle of wine was really more of a second date kind of a beverage. So, when your brother called me this morning and informed me that I needed to come over and make sure you weren't dead, I figured I might be able to kill two birds with one stone. Are you in the mood for bacon, eggs and sausage," Jack pointed to one set of containers, "Or for a BLT and an omelette?" Jack motioned to the other stack.

"Yes," Doug replied with a smile before swallowing three ibuprofen and taking a long swig of water. Both of those options sounded heavenly.

"Alright, then. We'll share." Jack busied himself with opening the containers and arranging them on the kitchen table. "Every man for himself. Where are your forks?"

"In the drawer to the right of the sink. I'm just..." Doug motioned toward his bedroom. "I think I need to go put on a shirt."

Jack looked up at him from behind a carton of orange juice. Doug felt himself flush red from head to toe as Jack stared at his bare torso with blatant approval. "Well, your house. Your rules."

Doug nodded and backed down the hall, stumbling only a little. "I. Yeah. Just going to brush my teeth. Back in a second."

Jack nodded and pointed at the kitchen table. "I'll meet you at that table. 10 minutes. It's a date?"

Doug nodded. He was probably doing his best impersonation of Pacey's best shit-eating grin. "Definitely."

"Happy birthday, Doug." Jack's voice rang down the hall and floated into Doug's bedroom from the kitchen.

Doug grinned to himself as he pulled a t-shirt over his head. "Happy birthday to me, indeed."

\-- end --  


**Author's Note:**

> For lucylooo who demanded drunk-dialing Doug for her birthday. And, I do what I'm told.  
> Originally written March 2010.


End file.
